Thomas Green here with Ethical Marketing Service. On the podcast today, we have Justin Shenck. Justin welcome.
Thomas, thank you so much, man. Excited to dive in and hopefully add some value to your audience today.
Thank you for that. Would you like to take a moment and tell the audience a bit about yourself and what you do?
Yeah man, you know, I’m your typical entrepreneur in 2020 to write multiple streams of income and almost accidental really, but I always like to say I’m a podcaster, a speaker and an entrepreneur. So six years ago I started a podcast called the growth now movement, which you know, I’ve been fortunate enough to get some really cool accolades like ink magazine listed me as a top a podcast every entrepreneur should follow and it’s really going on to build businesses and multiple streams of income for me, whether it be speaking all over the country on overcoming limiting beliefs and podcasting at times or I also own a podcast, production and coaching company and I’m partnered in a number of other companies as well. and the show itself has really kind of branched off into my own live event called Growth Now Summit Live, where people come from all over the country and Canada and hopefully one day the UK.
They attend virtually so far, so we’re trying to get them there in person, but Really, really blessed and honoured to be able to do what I do and I think it all comes from the idea that I found my purpose and I poured into it authentically 100%. And now business has really, really sprung from it over the last four or five years. Thank you for the introduction. You touched on a few things that I want to ask you about. But I am going to start with the one which I find most interesting, which is I believe it’s the case that you’ve got a way of overcoming any limiting beliefs. Is that right? Yeah. You know, it’s an interesting thing that I’ve, I’ve kind of discovered over my life and I’ll kind of share the journey with you of how it came to be, right? It’s a simple three-step process, but it’s not easy to execute on because anytime we have these limiting beliefs. They usually come from some place that have, We’ve decided to bury deep down inside as far as where does it come from. And so as I really kind of went into my life and realised I’ve had these limiting beliefs on many different ideas in my world.
Like, why can’t I be a millionaire? Why can’t I stay fit 24/7, why can’t I do all these things? And I was like, where did these limiting beliefs come from? And I’ve done a ton of research and I realised that limiting beliefs really come from four places. The first place is childhood. It could be as simple as you know, you’re a shy child and your parents go around telling people, hey Thomas is just shy, and that’s okay. Now Thomas walks around the rest of his life thinking that he’s shy. It also comes from society. Alright. Society says, hey, you know, you’re a woman, you can’t do something, hey, you’re a minority, you can’t do something or hey, you grew up poor so you can never become wealthy, whatever the case may be, that’s another place limiting beliefs come from also ourselves, right? That negative self-talk so many people talk about, right? We can go back to sixth grade and a woman or a girl says, you know, you ask a girl out for the first time and she says, no, I don’t want to. And for the rest of your life you go, you’re ugly, you’re not good enough, you’re all these things. And really, she never said that. You just said that yourself. And then the fourth place is really a subconscious. This is the one that I found out later. I originally found out the three and then later down the road I found we have the subconscious limiting beliefs of things that may have happened to us in our life and we’ve buried them.
And so the first thing we need to do is realise, okay, where do these limiting beliefs come from? And that’s really where the works begins, right? Like where does it really, truly come from in our lives? Why do I feel this way? Why can’t I overcome these things? and once you discover that it’s the simple three-step process. So the first thing is you get uncomfortable. So you have to do something to get out of your comfort zone in order to kind of shake or rock that foundation that’s inside of you. And I’ll share a real life example after this. But the first one is get uncomfortable. The second thing is surround yourself with the right people write those individuals that are going to cheer you on, that are going to support you in this journey. The ones that are gonna, once you start to slip, they’re gonna pick you up and say, hey, don’t slip, We got this. and then the third thing is take action because nothing works unless you do. And so that’s really the three-step process that if you’re able to do those three things consistently, you’re able to kind of break those, those negative self-talk, those limiting beliefs that we carry around and you know, something that I, as I began to kind of look into this, It was the end of 2020 when I was like, okay, these limiting beliefs are real, right?
I did the typical Covid quarantine, gained twenty pounds and I was like, I need to do something about this. And I realised there was a pattern in my life of every time I would get fit or lose weight, I would gain the weight back. And I was like, why do I self-sabotage? What are these things saying in my, in my subconscious like that I shouldn’t be the person who’s physically fit. And I rewound to when I was 12 years old, which I, I broke my hips when I was 12. That’s a whole other story. But I remember being finally getting to the point where I could walk again. It was about nine months into recovery and it was the time they were taking my crutches away. And I was sitting in the doctor’s office and the doctor was wrapping up and my mom said, you know, he can walk now, what are the long-term limits that he has to have or whatever? And the doctor goes, Well there, he could pretty much do anything a 12-year-old can do except he’ll never be an athlete. And I remember that sentence hanging in the air and that was the thing I buried back into the back of my brain. So whenever I would start to get physically fit or whatever, I would start self-sabotage because I had that, oh, I can’t be. And so in the beginning of 2021, I decided I’m going to squash those limiting beliefs and I took that three step process and the first step again getting uncomfortable.
I decided to do something called 75 hard. If you’re not familiar, it’s designed by a guy named Andy Fiscella, which is 75 days straight to 45 minute workouts, one has to be outside a gallon of water, no cheat meals, no alcohol, progress photo and 10 pages of self-help or business book every single day. And so I committed to this publicly. I said on my podcast, I’m doing 75 hard, which my podcast gets played in 100 countries every single week. So it’s a big uncomfortable commitment. The second thing is I surrounded myself with the right people. My girlfriend actually did 75 hard with me and she was there to, you know those times you wanna slip for those times you want to cheat. She was there to be like, no, we’re doing this together. And then the third thing is I took action. I actually did it and I completed it and you know, I can honestly say in 2021, I’ve worked out more than I had ever worked out in my life throughout the year. You know, I’ve, I’ve maintained some sort of physical stature and actually as we speak right now I’m doing 75 hard again and so I’ve been able to commit to certain things in my life that I’ve never been able to commit to and those limiting beliefs of me being the fit person, the rumours are no longer. And so that’s the simple yet not easy three-step process of overcoming those limiting beliefs.
Would you consider yourself an athlete now, then? You know what’s funny? No, I don’t because you know, I I’ve had awesome athletes on my podcast and I see what goes into what they do. But day one of 75 hard last year, I was taking a walk that morning walk with my girlfriend, which is a three-mile walk in the freezing cold. It was January 1st, and I looked at her and I go, babe, I’m an athlete, and she goes, yeah, you are number one. I was like, first of all, I had to convince – I had to say to myself, I’m an athlete at least once. And then the second thing was that’s how I knew I was surrounded by the right people. The fact that she would go was I was 25 pounds overweight. Yeah, you are, and so when I look at that, you know, you always kind of want to squash it, but no, I’m certainly not an athlete. but I’m way more physically fit and way stronger than I’ve ever been in my life and I’ll continue to get better. And I think I think that’s really the approach that I needed to take on my physicality was, I’ll continue to get better every single day. and yeah, so I’m not running sprints, I’m not doing the pole vault, I’m not, you know, whatever athletes do these days, the Olympics are in my mind, obviously.
But you know, definitely headed in the right direction for sure. Any other significant beliefs that you’ve overcome that spring to mind, do their constant, you know, I think we, we have really collected a ton of limiting beliefs through our lifetime and you know, as a child, I will say this, I went through some rough times as a child, my mom battled opioids for 20 years, my dad was in jail at one point. And so because of those things, I developed something called – I had abandonment issues. And so these are things that I felt like I wasn’t worthy of people sticking around for me and that’s something that I carried with me subconsciously for a really, really long time, I thought I had trust issues by the way and after therapy and coaching. I realised they were abandonment issues. And so you know, these were limiting beliefs based off of the way I was raised. Now keep in mind, my parents were loving parents like they crushed the parent game. They just chose their demons over me. And therefore I developed that I’m not enough mentality and you know, through many times of coaching and uncomfortably having these conversations and then putting in the work to realise my worth.
I’ve been able to overcome that and realise that I’m worthy of any relationship. Actually, I’m wearing a T-shirt right now that I’ve designed called worthless, worthy, which talks about that exact thing of like, hey, look at any point, every single human being, you know, including the amazing people that I’ve been able to interview on my podcast, they felt worthless. And so what’s the work we need to do to feel worthy? And a lot of that is that overcoming limiting belief process. But I would say that’s probably the biggest one, but there’s also little ones along the way, right? Like I could never be a public speaker, I could never be an author, I could never be whatever. And so the author, when I’m working on currently as I’m writing my book, which is a very uncomfortable process. But all these limiting beliefs that we’ve built up over time, we have to be able to overcome them. What’s the book about? Or is it spoilers? so I’ll tell you it’s about finding fulfilment because I’ve realised that we can have these massive goals in our life, which are very, very important for a direction. But people tie their worth to their goals versus finding fulfilment every single moment they think once they get to the goal, they’re gonna be happy once they get to the goal, they’re no longer going to feel depressed or sad or unworthy or all these things and it’s actually the exact opposite most high performers.
When they finally reached that massive goal they set for themselves, they feel more worthless because they realise they don’t have that feeling they expected. And so the book is really about finding fulfilment and focusing on what I call the four pillars of life, which is business relationships, wellness and spirituality. And so that’s really the premise of it tying in my own personal journey and my own personal stories along with some of the incredible people I’ve been in that I’ve interviewed on my podcast and their journey. When you touched upon your journey from going from you’re difficult, shall we say, difficult upbringing? Would you say that that’s an accurate label? Yes. in hindsight, yes, as I talk about it as an adult, but I think any time somebody that goes through life and they go through hardships, it’s almost just, this is just normal. I didn’t know any different, right? Like I didn’t know what it was like to grow up In a household where my parents were happily married, like they got divorced when I was 12, right? I didn’t know what it was like to what whatever, like have that comfort of knowing when I got home, both my parents would be there and they’d be smiling.
So therefore it wasn’t. I don’t know if it was necessarily difficult. It was, it was interesting, right? Like I just heard somebody tell a story about how Coolio was having a conversation with jimmy Fallon or something like that and jimmy Fallon was like, yeah, I was always, I was worried every day that I’d be picked on for my funny hair or whatever and Coolio was like oh I was worried every single day that I would get killed in a drive by shooting, but it was in their minds it was still the same amount of worry and so it was an interesting kind of reflection on like Everybody has their own trauma, their own their own journey, their own story, this one just happened to be mine. So I think it was kind of normal for me to go through it now in hindsight I realised that it wasn’t normal to you know have and when I was 12 years old, my mom got arrested for stealing opioids from her job or my dad had spent a couple of years in jail when I was in my teens. And so when I when I look at that I understand it’s not normal now, but I think the biggest thing was I didn’t have the same opportunity as other people, right? Because of what I went through, I was a poor student because I chose not to engage and had a 1.7 GPA. So college wasn’t the route I was going and so for me it’s been a perpetual journey of growth when I was 19 years old I had a mentor, I got a direct sales job which you know taught me sales and communication and all the things that I utilised now in my business, but my mentor handed me a book called who moved my cheese and that was my introduction into self-development and the idea that like, oh wow, there are other people that go through hard times as well and there are, are people that I can learn from and from 19 till probably 30 was a constant evolution of me and a constant growth of me and when I was 30 is when I really clicked on the podcast and, and started to have those conversations and really dive deep and then really put in the work of everything that I’ve learned from 19 to 30 and, and you know, trying different things and implementing those things. And so it’s a constant evolution that I’m and I’m still a work in progress. I always say to people like, hey, like if you find my podcast, you’re coming on a journey with me. This isn’t about you learning from me. Yes, there are times where I do solo episodes and I teach the things that I’ve learned, but it’s really about us growing together and I can learn from you just like you can learn from me.
And just like my girlfriend’s 11-year-old son, like I can learn from him, just like he can learn from me. It’s not ever that whole like we’ve reached this epitome of or this, you know? Yeah, the epitome of the greatness, right? And so for me, it’s a constant journey, it’s a constant evolution, many, many failures along the way of my own three failed businesses and so on and so forth. But for me, I have to constantly be learning and constantly be growing. And that’s part of my fulfilment. Everybody has a different type of idea of what that means, but it’s really about finding what is that for you? Well, I was just following on from how I started was you you’ve gotten to the place where you a r a top rated podcaster. and one of the things which I wanted to ask you about was common, shall we say mistakes that podcasters make? Am I doing the mistakes before you answer the question? No, I mean, so I don’t I don’t really, I don’t really know most mistakes are in the beginning.
And I made all of them. And that’s why I can outright tell people what the mistakes are because I made every single one of them. And I and I only learned by doing the mistakes. So back six years ago when I had a podcast or started a podcast, I would tell people that I had a podcast and their response will be what’s a podcast. And so now I say upload, I have a podcast and people roll their eyes and they go, oh, you too, right, because everybody’s got one, which is not true by the way, there’s only there’s only two million podcast on iTunes, and I think only 700,000 of them are active. So when you think about that, compared to the amount of people in the world, but anyway, I digress, everybody knows what the podcast is now, but so when I learned it was really about attempting things and really trying it on my own and seeing what worked and what didn’t. And so I think the big, a couple of the big, big mistakes that I see podcasters do number one, their launch is always wrong. A lot of the times, it’s wrong. And so what I mean by that is when you launch, you should launch with multiple episodes to understand your podcast audience because they, they want podcast listeners are usually binge listeners right?
Like when this episode ends, it’ll click to the next episode and your people will continue to listen. Like they become binge listeners of the show. So if you only give them one episode, they might go listen, but they’re not gonna stick around, they’re not gonna click subscribe, so you have to give them that bulk of the listenership from day one, number two, your branding has to look really good. This is the thing, especially now compared to six years ago that, which has become very, very important. It’s like you have to stand out, like what is your branding look like? How are you presenting yourself? Especially if you want to grow your audience and you want to grow the types of guests you have on your show and everything else in between if you don’t present yourself professionally, you’re not gonna do well right? Like I always, I always kind of like in this like a target. You guys have a Target in the UK? Is that a really obnoxious question? No, I don’t think so. Okay, so Target is a huge brand here. It’s a shopping store where you can get everything from Starbucks in the front to close in the back to electronics, home goods, all the stuff very, very popular in the United States. And so the branding is clearly very clean, professional, and on point, like if you walked up to a store, and so the target literally says target and it’s like red rings, it looks like a target.
So if I walked up and it said targeting a scribble letter, and next to it was a weird, funky looking half circle, whatever, I wouldn’t even go in the store. So you have to present your branding and yourself very, very professionally in the front end and then on the back end, what you’re producing has to match the branding, and what I mean by that is a lot of times, I’ll go, I’ll find a podcast and it will be called the art of being a cool guy and I go in and I start listening and not one episode is about the art of being a cool guy. So you have to make sure that the messaging inside of what you’re presenting matches what you’re presenting, right? Like the cover of the book tells you what the book’s about, and then you read the book and you go, okay, this makes sense. The same thing should happen in podcasting, which is a massive mistake people make or they’ll pivot And they won’t re brand or whatever. and so I’ll give an example of this and what I mean by like, I made all the mistakes when I launched my show, the first 64 episodes, I had a co-host number one. The reason I had a co-host by the way, I’m very, very real and open about my journey.
I had a co-host because I was afraid of failing on my own. So I said, if he comes along with me and we fail at least we both suck. And it’s not just me, that was the original idea. By the way, when we were together, we sucked, nobody listened. It was a terrible thing. Like, there was a moment actually when, when I wanted to quit because I was like, I had 30 listeners in episode, I’m like, what am I doing? I don’t know who these people are. And you know, part of that story is actually pretty inspirational in the time that I was like, I, I should just wrap it up. Like I’m just wasting my time. Somebody from Japan reached out to me and said because of your show, I decided not to take my life and the reason I share that is this is why I still show up and I still say yes to people who asked me to be on their podcast no matter where they are, whether it’s episode one or episode 100 because I realised there could be one person listening that I say something that changes their life, it might not be that extreme, but they might go, oh, you know what I was thinking about podcasting and Justin said my branding needs to be on point, maybe I should invest in that, right? And so and that changes the game for many, many people. But anyway, back to what I was saying about the podcast, our branding and messaging didn’t match because he was talking about business.
I because of some of the things that I just recently went through, I was trying to talk about self-love and you know, overcoming adversity and all the things that I still talk about today, but there was a very a mismatch. And so we didn’t, we didn’t really hit the rhythm that we needed to for our audience to connect and when I asked him to take a step back and I started to do episodes on my own, that’s when I started to see growth. And so that’s really the branding matching the messaging on the back end. And so this is what I mean by like I made all the mistakes that you could possibly make. but those are some of the common ones that I see right off the bat and then hopefully, you know, people learn to pivot and grow and you can always rebrand and relaunch and do all those things. But those are some of the mistakes that I see right from the get is this touch on your background that we talked about before we started recording of the podcast, production and coaching? Yeah, I mean it’s definitely literal background people. Oh yeah, the background, Yes, so this is, you know what’s funny about this? This is so I have a background people listening to this, not watching, I have a background behind me which has some of the guests on my show like Ed Millet and Andy Fossella and Trent Shelton, and Gabby Bernstein and people like that.
So this was the original social media post that I would do for every episode. So this was the original branding. It’s different now. so it’s funny because whenever I put new people on the wall, I have to rebrand them with the old one just so I can match them on my wall. So obviously I’ve evolved and grown and the brand is involved and grown, but the reason I, I want to point that out is I started doing this and then all of a sudden I noticed like 10 other podcasters copying this format of the picture next to the title and stuff like that and so then I was like okay, I gotta shift and then I shifted to something that was worse than this for a while and I could tell that it was worse because my engagement on social media went down and then, and now I’ve shifted again and actually very, very similar to like understanding the trends of social media and how your brand works. the images that I create now, I only put in my Instagram story or I put on Facebook and then I actually create reels for every episode now and so that’s really kind of reaches more people, but the reason I share that is because we branding is very, very important from the get, but you also have to evolve with the times the same thing that worked five years ago doesn’t work anymore and so you have to be able, it’s another full time job in order to keep up with all the brands that are all the shifting of the social media, you know, algorithm and all that stuff.
Well, you did say that you were talking about self-love initially in your first 64 episodes, I think it was, and one of your questions which I did think was quite important of all the things that I could ask you about is what are most people lacking in life in order to feel happy. What your thoughts then? Yeah, what most people are lacking is the idea of self-care and self-love, right? So what I mean by that is I I’ve interviewed you know over 400 people, I’ve I think 418 episodes of my podcast, something like that. And a majority of them are interviews and I asked the same question. Every single guest is a two part question. The first part is what’s your definition of success? And the second part is what are the three things you do every single day to ensure that success for yourself? So obviously the first part was always different, right? Like what’s your definition of success? But I will say this, it was never about physical or tangible things, it was always about time. Freedom was about happiness, it was about connecting closer with their families and their loved ones and all that stuff.
And then the second part was the three things you do to ensure that success and there are always things to take care of themselves in some way, shape or form, working out, meditating, learning something new, you know, downtime for yourself, whatever the case may be those three things that they did were always to make sure that they fill their own cup. And so the piece that people are lacking is that they look outside of themselves for happiness instead of going inside and saying, what do I truly need and what we truly need is to take care of ourselves and to make sure we take time to breathe and take time to focus on the things that make us happy. And so the things that people lack is, they’re trying so hard to make everybody else around them happy instead of themselves. because they think, hey, if my wife and my husband is happy or my kids are happy, then I can have a smile on my face, but guess what, You can’t pour from an empty cup and so you have to take the time every single day to make sure that you fill your own cup. And I’ve realised over the journey of the last six years, is that the most selfless thing we can do is to be selfish and we have to take back our time and we have to really make sure that we’re operating on all cylinders for other people.
And that’s really the piece that people are missing is that we think that happiness comes from the outside world, but it really comes from within and so we have to be able to do the work to make sure that we are 100% ourselves every single day. So what do you say when someone asks you, how do you define success? I define success? Being able to do what I want to do when I want to do it with the people I want to do it with? Not the people I want to do that’s inappropriate Thomas, I blame you for that. The people I want to do it with. And so what I mean by that is, you know, ultimate freedom in my life and this isn’t defined by the way by wealth or things or anything like that. It’s defined by being able to go off and do what I want whenever I want. If I want a cigar at two o’clock in the afternoon, I go outside and smoke a cigar. If I want to travel, I’ll travel if I want to spend time with, you know, my girlfriend instead of doing work, I’ll do that. and so success for me is having the ability to do whatever I want to do whenever I want to do it. And it sounds, again, it sounds very, very selfish, but if I’m able to do that, that means when I’m focused on work, I’m 100% focused on work when I’m with my loved ones, I’m 100% focused on my loved ones when I’m, you know, whatever.
And so being able to be present at any given time and we do that by being able to create a world where we’re no longer stressed out or distracted by the things around us. And so that’s really my definition of success is the ability to live carefree 24/7 and it’s not always perfect. but it’s certainly striving to get there is close enough for me. Would you say that you’re happy then? Oh yeah, I mean I’ve never been so happy and let me define what I feel is happiness. We think happiness is that joyful, exuberant, jumping up and down constantly, smiling type of thing. I don’t think that’s the case. Number one, happiness is a choice. We choose if we’re happy or not. And so a number of years ago I was going through some relationship struggles and I had a relationship coach and I remember getting really angry about something and I was having a coaching call with her and she goes, well, how do you feel right now? And I said, I feel angry, and her response was, you’re allowed to feel angry, you just can’t be an asshole. And I paused in that moment and I realised, yeah, it’s funny how it’s worded, right?
But I paused and in that moment I realised this is the first time in my life I was given permission to be anything but happy and what that evolved into is the realisation that even though I’m at times angry, even though at times I’m stressed, even though at times I’m sad, even though at times I’m whatever, I’m also happy in those exact moments because happiness is much larger than just a moment, Happiness is the idea that I will get through this, happiness is the idea that even when bad things happen, I understand that it’s happening for me, instead of, to me it’s no longer playing the victim when things go awry around you. And so I I actually literally believe that I choose happened, it’s 24 7, even when I’m feeling all those other emotions interesting, I’ve not heard that before, So thank you for the answer. we’ve touched on how many people you’ve interviewed and the fact that you’ve been podcasting for such a long time. What are the themes of the top performance that you’ve that you’ve interviewed, that you recall? Yeah, I mean, I would say the one thing I’ve already touched on is is the fact that their daily habits started focus on filling their cups.
I think that’s the biggest common theme now keep in mind as we talk about this and people who haven’t heard my podcast. you know, I’ve interviewed people from all walks of life, I’ve interviewed stand-up comics, I’ve interviewed reality stars, I’ve interviewed celebrity chefs, I’ve interviewed massive entrepreneurs and so they all come from different walks of life, but every single one of them have reached the peak of what their success could be, or what they defined it as right. and so I would say definitely taking care of themselves as a common theme. The second thing is they constantly give more than they receive and this is something that I organically have always done in my life, I’m a giver, I end up and it’s funny that I tell you this now, because now, you know how I’m going to end our conversation, but I end every conversation with, you know, if there’s anything I can ever do to help you, please let me know, and if I can help people, I will, and if I can I try and find somebody who can, you know, that’s always my goal. and that was the common thing with every single person I’ve interviewed now, I don’t know if that is every successful person in the world, but that’s the people I’m clearly drawn to write, because we kind of vibrate on the same levels of hey, I want to be able to help as much as I possibly can.
And so I would say those are the two things. Number one, they make sure they take care of themselves in some way, shape or form a very single day and fill their cup, And number two, they give more than they receive. And if someone asked you that question at the end of an episode, how can I help you? Mm hmm. This is the first time somebody’s asked me this man. So kudos to you, I should say on a on a on a podcast, you know, right now, I think that my answer to that question whenever I do get it is, you know, I can’t think of anything right now, but certainly I appreciate the offer and if I do come up with something I’ll ask which I will if it if it ever comes to that, but I would say more than anything to stay connected as human beings, I think over the last, let’s just say two years, right? Like we’ll just throw a random two years out there. The world has changed a lot. and I think the world has changed a lot because it’s created massive divide and separation and what people believe and what they support and whatever, but the real power is in coming together. And so I think the way people can help me is to just stay connected don’t allow one conversation to be one conversation, you know, allow ourselves to, even though we may disagree to be one as human beings.
And that’s the way we can help you can help me and that’s the way we can help the world. and I think that’s the big shift right now that we all need to create is massive togetherness, even when we don’t agree. and I think that if we can get to there as human beings across the globe, as we talk in the United States and the UK, we can figure that out across the globe, a lot of the world’s problems will be solved right point in terms of I know that podcasting in a sense can be its own business, but then you, you mentioned you had a side business, do you mind talking about that for a bit? So people know what you do? Yeah, man, so it’s, yes, it’s a side business, but no, it’s not like it’s just Justin shank business, right? so obviously that my podcast does generate an income which is, you know, something I’m really, really grateful for, but it’s, it’s really lead into other opportunities for me both in the podcast space and outside of the podcast space. So my brand has grown enough where I get to speak and I get paid to go speak all over the country and talk about the things I like to talk about but I’ve also really kind of launched that into my own live event called Growth Now, Summit Live, which I hold in Pennsylvania, but we also have a virtual option as well, which we’re about to turn that on, it’s, it’s going to be a free option for people to be able to tune in and check that out wherever they are in the globe, which is, which is really exciting and so obviously that’s part of my business, but then in the podcast space, I help people launch and produce their shows and I work with some of the biggest names in the world, which has been really, really exciting and rewarding to be a part of their journey and their growth.
And then I also partner within two podcast businesses, one is a podcast branding service, and that started because I had that conversation that we had earlier about podcasters branding needing to be better and somebody came to me and said, hey, do you want to partner with me in this idea that I have and, and so that’s that actually if people are interested in this pose brand dot Io where we help podcasters, you know, take their brand, they’re branding to the next level and help them grow their show that way. and then the other one’s a podcast guesting service called po’d kong, which is a high end guarantee reach, get podcast guesting service, where we work with people who are looking to, you know, whether it’s build their brand, launched a new book launch a business, whatever we help them get on shows to help them kind of expand their reach from that standpoint. but yeah, man, you know, I think for me, the end of the day is everything that I do, is to help further my message, but then also help others further, there’s because we all have something really, really important to say. And so every single business that I say yes, to be a part of it’s always about helping people expand their message and impact the world in some way, shape or form.
And so I would say that yes, all these are side businesses in some way, shape or form, but they’re all impact driven, whether it’s my own impact or the impact of others, and that’s always been my mission and organically, I’ve been given the opportunity to be a part of some really cool things that help people do that. I can tell podcasting is a big sort of impacted your life in a way, where do you see it going in the next, let’s say, 10 years? That’s a great question. so I would say actually even more now than it used to, and I, I actually, I admittedly missed the boat on this one. But the visuals of podcasting, people watching more, you know, Roganesque, right? Like how it’s more of a show. I think big media brands are going to continue to play a bigger role in podcasting, whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing. I don’t have that answer yet, but they’re gonna continue to see the power in it, right? You see Spotify buying up all these things and you see all these companies investing in it because of the reach, let’s look at it this way, right, Joe Rogan’s reach is 10 times more than CNN.
And so as we see that in those platforms being able to grow and expand, you’re gonna see the power of podcasting become more extreme and as, as our technologies expand and it’s easier to listen to you’re gonna have more and more people listening to podcasts and so I think more than anything, if your branding is not on point do it now because the big brands are coming in more and more every single day and they’re gonna start to squash the little man and so we need to step up big and again, come together and see how we can help each other. but yeah, man, I just see it growing. and what I meant by, by the way, the video side of things and where I missed the boat. I have all my episodes on YouTube, you can go listen to all 400 plus their own YouTube, but it’s literally a still image until recently, which I’ve been uploading the videos when I, because I, I recorded resume like you and so I’ve been uploading the videos and before the pandemic, I said, Why would I upload these videos? Nobody wants to sit down and watch two people side by side talking to each other. And here we are living in a world where every single person is watching people sitting side by side.
And so yes, I do upwards of 10,000 downloads per episode of my podcast. But my YouTube does like a whopping anywhere from two views. And so I’m doubling down now on the podcast on YouTube. and seeing what I can do there. So, I’m working on that branding and working on that kind of style, but, but it’s intriguing to be like, I really kinda wish that I was just taking the time back the last six years, uploading all these interviews because I didn’t do that and I missed that boat, so hopefully people can double down and do that now. There is something which maybe you can help me with selfish question that I wrestle with sometimes, which is, I know that there are best practices, so for example, I know that there are studios that you could actually, let’s say, you go get a studio for your podcast. You look a lot more professional than if you record it in an office room like I’m doing right now, but I do, like, personally, from my own perspective, I do like being able to do it from anywhere. So sometimes I do in my office, sometimes I’ll do it in this room, sometimes I’ll do it from home.
And sometimes I use the green screen, sometimes I won’t depending on what my preferences are. and so I did come to the conclusion that I’m just going to do it the way that I want to do it. and then I can see some sustainability or longevity to do it that way versus, as you say that there are branding principles and best practices and what the differences are there in terms of what you should and shouldn’t be doing. Yeah, so I’ll say this band for most people podcasting is a labour of love and a passion. And so whatever is going to allow you to live your passion the way you want to live it, that’s what I highly recommend. I’ve been able to grow a massive brand of my podcast and I started with a $60 microphone and I used that $60 microphone until about a year ago and so, and then I was like, yeah, I guess I should, you know, invest a little bit now, like, and now I have a Shure microphone or I wear a headset sometimes, which is like, I was stupid and I’m like why did I pay? It was like $500 for two headsets and like what am I doing? So anyway, so that part doesn’t really matter as much as you’d think, especially if you don’t have a ton of money on the back end of your brand.
Now, if you really are focusing on video, I highly recommend, like that’s where you want to push people. I highly recommend investing in a camera, maybe getting sustainability with what your background looks like. But it really depends on what you’re focusing on, if you’re focusing on the audio, which I did for many years and I, and I won that way. Then that doesn’t matter, the background doesn’t matter that stuff doesn’t matter, like I said, my background has really become just a networking tool and that’s why I still have it, but with that being said, I think you know, really being focused on what’s going to make it the most fun for you and make sure that you continuously stay in your passion now, if it starts to generate an income for you and then it makes sense to go brand it cool Dude, like I said, I work with some of the biggest brands in the world biggest, but influencer brands, I mean not necessarily like target or whoever, even though you don’t know what target is, which is crazy to me, but I work with some of the biggest influencer brands and they don’t even have a, a commonality behind everything that they’re doing and so that part doesn’t matter what really matters in podcasting.
I think part of the reason I love it so much is it’s the content, like it really, really matters how good the content is that you’re giving to your audience, because what happens is say, Jim bob’s listening to the show and he’s like, this is really good content, well he’s gonna tell his friends and says, hey look, you’re into this stuff, like I’m into this stuff, it’s really good content, you should listen to it and that’s really the main focus and then that whole idea of like where you’re sitting when you’re recording and stuff like that, that’s secondary I mean I know people who started massive podcasts and they record it while they’re driving down the road. Do I recommend that? Absolutely not. But you can absolutely do that if your content is really, really good, is there anything that I should have asked you about today? No man, I think, I think you’ve done a phenomenal job like you, you got me on a question. Nobody’s ever asked me in the way that you asked me it. no, I’ve, I’ve really enjoyed our conversation. What are your goals, Justin? My goal is to be more abundant in what I have in my life and who I am in my life. And what I mean by that is I told you that my main focus is to give more than I receive.
So if I’m more abundant, it means I can give even more. And so my ultimate goal is to just be more abundant in what I have than what I have now. And I don’t mean physical things by the way, I just mean in my, my ability to give and so that’s really my goal. And so it’s really funny, they’re like, you know, you talk to all these entrepreneurs and they have, you know, set your goals and set a timeline and do all these things. I’ve got goals. Like for my live event, I would love to fill an arena one day, but I don’t put a timeline on it and I’m going to share with you. Why? Because if I set a timeline of, oh, I want to fill an arena in three years of my life event and all of a sudden, three years later, I’m still doing my live event. It’s successful. I’ve got a lot of people coming, I’m changing lives and by the way, successful means I’m changing lives. It doesn’t matter if there’s 10,000 people in the room or 100 people in the room, it’s still a success. And three years later it’s successful. I just didn’t feel that arena, so I didn’t reach my goal and all of a sudden I’m down on myself, I don’t feel worthy anymore, all these things. And so the goal gives me a direction, it gives me something to push for. It gives me something to reach for, but I’m not going to tie my worth to it. And what happens is we look at our goals in the setting of the timelines as essentially like a, you know, an antidote to the symptoms that we have, we’re looking at for the cure for all the things that we’re struggling with and going through and we need to find that happiness, like I said earlier within ourselves.
And so I have goals, they’re fun goals. I hope that I reach them one day, but I have no timeline for it now every day. Do I work towards it 100% but I don’t have a timeline for, for any of that stuff. And so, I think my big goal is 10,000 people or 6000 people in an arena. We I say 6000 cause we have a local arena to me that fits 6000 people. I would love I would love to sell it out one day but I’m not gonna tie any of my worth to it. So my real goal is I’m gonna be better tomorrow than I am today. Any stoic influence there. I don’t know. I’m not even that smart, man. I had a 1.7 G. P. At one point in high school. So maybe some dude sometimes are limiting beliefs can be reality as well And so look, I’m a really hard worker, I know how to surround myself with the right people but I’m not book smart so when you say stoicism. Sure yeah, that’s where it’s from. Alright, well, I think you’ve been a fantastic guest. I very much thought that you would be but if people want to learn more about you or perhaps hire you, where can they do that?
Yeah I mean the easiest place wherever they’re listening to this they can search growth now movement like I said earlier if they like it, click subscribe, come along on the journey with me and then you know Instagram is a really cool spot that I like to hang out a lot. It’s at Justin T Schenck there you can see how to spell the last name in the show notes because nobody gets that right. And then you know with all that being said, if they want to work with me in some way, shape or form, they could just reach out on Instagram because there’s so many places they can work with me. It all depends.
Justin Schenck. Thank you very much dude.
Thomas, thank you so much, man. I appreciate this conversation. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it and I look forward to staying connected.